Mr. & Mrs. Smith

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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are married assassins.

 

May 31, 2005

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Having successfully reinvigorated the musty political thriller with "The Bourne Identity," Doug Liman tries his hand at resuscitating the once-thriving urbane comedy genre, and the pyrotechnically enhanced upshot is a blast.

Expertly tossing off the type of well-sharpened banter that was the domain of Gable and Lombard and Tracy and Hepburn, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie -- no matter what their off-camera status -- make one swell combative couple.

While there are times when the film recalls the darkly comedic elements of "The War of the Roses" and "Prizzi's Honor," the Liman variation has its very own sleek and sexy charm.

Robust reviews and strong word-of-mouth should help the 20th Century Fox release overcome some less-than-enthusiastic early buzz -- generated in part by those persistent Brad 'n' Angelina tabloid stories as well as murmurs about on-set tensions and those two weeks of reshoots -- and emerge as a solid, adult-skewing hit.

Things begin uneventfully enough in couples therapy, where John Smith (Pitt) and Jane Smith (Jolie) are responding to an unseen interrogator's questions regarding the quality of their marriage.

It seems that the Smiths have gotten into a bit of a rut on the domestic front, especially when compared with the way they met five or six years earlier (depending on whom you ask) in a mid-revolution Bogota, Colombia.

What each has yet to learn about the other is that both are highly trained assassins for competing interests. While they've never taken their work home with them, all is about to change when John and Jane end up in each other's cross hairs.

As irony would have it, their mutual mission is just the thing to put the spark back into their relationship -- and spark it does, to scorching effect.

Although the picture loses a bit of steam toward the end, even with those reshoots, it's still an enjoyable ride. Where other purported action comedies struggle to get the balance right, Liman, working from a script by Simon Kinberg that started out as a film school thesis project, achieves the tricky tone.

Strip away some of those high-tech flourishes and it could have easily been a Hitchcock vehicle. As it turns out, Hitch did direct a film titled "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," a change-of-pace screwball comedy starring Lombard and Robert Montgomery, which is related to the current picture in name only.

No doubt Hitchcock would have enjoyed shooting two of the most photogenic actors on the planet who, incidentally, also happen to do some of their best work here.

Jolie, in a role that was once attached to Nicole Kidman, gets a chance to let her hair down and pitch those scary knives and caustic zingers with the same deadly aim, while Pitt is the loosest he's been since "Snatch," to highly amusing effect.

Together, they handily navigate the film's constantly shifting character dynamics and several, precisely choreographed gunfights that play more like ballistic ballets.

And while it's mainly all about the Smiths, some choice screen time is reserved for Liman's "Swingers" star Vince Vaughn, entertaining as Pitt's mama's-boy business associate.

Technical attributes are appropriately zippy, from Bojan Bazelli's kinetic camerawork to editor Michael Tronick's tightly calibrated pacing.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith
20th Century Fox
Regency Enterprises presents a New Regency production/a Summit Entertainment production/a Weed Road Pictures production.

Credits:
Director: Doug Liman
Screenwriter: Simon Kinberg
Producers: Arnon Milchan, Akiva Goldsman, Lucas Foster, Patrick Wachsberger, Eric McLeod
Executive producer: Erik Feig
Director of photography: Bojan Bazelli
Production designer: Jeff Mann
Editor: Michael Tronick
Costume designer: Michael Kaplan
Music: John Powell
Casting: Joseph Middleton, Michelle Morris Gertz
Cast:
John Smith: Brad Pitt
Jane Smith: Angelina Jolie
Eddie: Vince Vaughn
Benjamin Danz: Adam Brody
Jasmine: Kerry Washington
Father: Keith David
Martin Coleman: Chris Weitz
Suzy Coleman: Rachael Huntley
Leroy: Peter Lavin
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time -- 120 minutes

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000938451

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